What Does He Want Now? Presidential Impact on Supreme Court Conference Time

• In Event: Independence and Influence in Federal Judicial Decisionmaking

Abstract

Because the Supreme Court lacks the ability to implement its decisions, the Court, at times, is motivated to consider the executive branch’s policy preferences. Using a web-scraper tool, we collected the number of days each petition submitted to the Supreme Court spent in the conference phase. Days in conference is an interesting characteristic of a petition. Being in conference, rather than being denied, means resources are continued to be devoted to a petition. We also found that days in conference significantly impact the likelihood of cert being granted. As an initial use of this data, we explore the executive’s impact on the Court’s petition-discussion time. We predict that the president’s agenda will induce the Court to spend a greater amount of time considering a case in that issue area, indicating that the Court is cognizant of presidential signals of policy preferences. Overall, this study expands our understanding of the impact of the executive’s agenda on judicial decision-making in a subtle, yet important, manner. More broadly, this conference-time variable can be useful in a variety of studies.

Authors

• Matt Montgomery, Georgia State University

• Natalie C. Rogol, Rhode Island College